No Hotmail, MSN or Microsoft sites available with Safari, Firefox or IE%

Before I start this in not just about adding new hotmail accounts to entourage. Please read the whole message

It all started on Friday morning I could not receive mail into entourage from hotmail, I have 3 hotmail accounts and another non hotmail account set up in entourage. The non hotmail account works fine, none of the hotmail ones do.

I have had my hotmail accounts for over 7 years and thus MSN allowed me to go off line with them when they went web based. I have used off line hotmail account with mac for over 3 years. On this macmini the accounts have been running fine for over a year

Since Friday though, whenever i try and retreive mail, the error codes I get, "reached end of file" for one account and the others have the error "connection to the server failed or was dropped" -3253.

Now, I have checked with my ISP and there are no faults found at their end, I am not running a firewall and the first time this happened was straight after start and all mail was working fine before close down

Whilst being annoyed at this I thought well I can use web based mail, that's when things started getting fishier. I can't access hotmail through Safari, Firefox or IE5. I can log onto Messenger but not access the hotmail from there.Although i can see how many messages i have got. My response, I went to look for a microsoft update and I can't get access microsoft sites either. None, all browsers just time out

I have cleared the cache in all browsers, and reset safari completely. I have checked for errant entourage temp files and found none. I have pinged both hotmail and microsoft and I get a response. The only other site I seem to have issue with is www.iht.com,(again ping successful) some others are tempremental like www.rsvp.com.au (yes a dating site, but it's best to give all details right). I have been able to access my hotmail from other sources

I can't access MSN either but can access nineMSN.com.au, the local MSN network

I have spent over 48 hours searching for relevant article on the net, in forums and looking through library and cleaning caches, this is not a simple issue of adding hotmail accounts to entourage

Oh and I recently loading little snitch to check for unautorised network traffic and I can see none.

So basically, I am flummoxed, for some reason my mac mini is stopped getting to microsoft sites.

Anyone got any ideas, as my next step it to take the mac mini else wheres and check on some elses internet connection

mac: a waterproof raincoat made of rubberized fabric
MAC: a data communication protocol sub-layer, also known as the Media Access Control
Mac: a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc.